I had a prenatal appointment on Monday and had intended to do my blog then sharing a happy update with our first ultrasound that we've been able to get a copy to keep. On Monday afternoon we went to our appointment, excited to see our little boy/girl. However, just like in Fremont, our doctor had a hard time seeing the baby and sent us down to the radiology department to get a better view. Of course the usual anxiety sets in when they can't find the baby, but I was rewarded with a great view of our baby and saw the little head and eyes, an elbow and little buds of arms and legs. Also a very strong heartbeat.
We celebrated with a small celebratory lunch with my mom and went on to do a little maternity pants shopping. Despite losing about 12-15 pounds since I found out I was pregnant (yay!) I have busted out of all my pants. Those of you that I work with may have noticed that even though I'm not a dress/skirt person normally, I have been wearing more of my dresses and skirts because they are the only things I fit into comfortably :). So with some more comfortable clothes and an ultrasound in hand, I went home a very happy person.
The next morning I woke up with nausea, a pounding headache, and some dizziness, and stayed home. It turns out that was a good idea, considering what happened later in the day. Later that afternoon, Josh had left to go get us some food because I finally felt okay to eat, and I was washing a couple of dishes for when he got back. Just a warning: if you don't want to read the exact details that you may find to be TMI or too gross you may want to skip the rest of this paragraph. While washing a dish, I felt a surge of fluid passing and immediately went to the restroom. Sure enough there was some blood. As I got up the entire toilet had been filled with the color of the blood. My brain went on high alert and since I unfortunately have experience with the worst case scenario I began looking for signs of miscarriage, which luckily I didn't see. I knew that if I called Kaiser or went to the ER they'd ask how fast I was filling a pad, I put one on to check how much blood I was losing. I called Josh to hurry home, and while he was on his way back, I had a couple more trips to the bathroom with the same results. Although I saw no signs of miscarriage(blood clots, tissue, etc) I was still scared enough to want to go to the ER. I was so scared and started crying and praying very hard. As soon as Josh returned I filled him in and he drove me to the ER. Thank goodness we only live about 5 minutes away from the Kaiser hospital here in Modesto.
Luckily there was no wait and we got in right away. They ran blood tests and those of you who have been pregnant before know what an HCG test is, but for those who haven't-the pregnancy hormone HCG number should double every 48 hours. In previous pregnancies, I had this test done when I was worried about miscarriage and saw these numbers drop which is a major indicator of miscarriage. I have to go back tomorrow to give blood again, to know the results of this test, but all the other things they were checking for came back okay. They did another ultrasound in the ER and there was our baby, with his/her strong heart beat, wiggling around. I swear, I have never been so happy to see a heartbeat as I was yesterday. His/her heartbeat was normal, not to low or high, so it appears the baby was oblivious to what was going on and it wasn't affecting him/her at all.
So my next question was, what's going on? They are still not 100% sure, but it could have been a number of things. With my bicornute uterus, I could be prone to random bleeding; it could have been a blood blister or something similar on the cervix that was manipulated by the internal ultrasound done the day before; some women just bleed during their pregancy; a side effect of the progesterone I have to take; dehydration, causing little fluid for the amniotic sac the baby lives in. Since there wasn't any clots or tissue or sign that I was passing the baby or miscarrying and I wasn't cramping, I was sent home to keep an eye on the situation and was told to stay home the next day to let my body recooperate-also if I was miscarrying it wouldn't be good to be at work and many miles from the closest Kaiser hospital.
The good news, as of this posting, the bleeding has almost completely stopped! :) I never saw anything passed or had any cramps. So hopefully this was just a fluke or one time deal. I am waiting to talk to the Modesto ob/gyn specialist and will continue to keep an eye on myself. The ER nurse was nice enough to let Josh take a video of the ultrasound so we could have his/her heartbeat on video.
It's been a stressful couple of days but I'm glad there's a happy ending. I will continue to keep you posted and hopefully there will be more posts to come :) In the video below, I know it is hard to see much of anything, but the baby is on the left side of the "black circle" and the long string looking thing is the umbilical cord. The baby was moving slightly up and down. Video isn't loading I'll try putting it in another post.
